Craig is an AI-powered alarm clock voiced by Craig Robinson, built to wake you up with hilarious, hard-hitting affirmations tailored for small business owners.
Every wake-up feels personal, motivational, and just the right amount of unhinged, like your favorite coworker got hold of a mic and decided to hype you up with no filter.
The content spans pre-recorded Craigisms tied to holidays and big hype moments, evergreen affirmations for entrepreneurs, and dynamic, API-connected updates. Craig isn’t just an alarm. It is designed to entertain, energize, and celebrate the hustle, all before you’ve even had your first cup of coffee.
THE OPPORTUNITY
AT&T wanted to connect with small business owners in a way that felt authentic, energizing, and memorable. The brief was to create something people would actually look forward to using every day, a tool that could motivate, entertain, and keep entrepreneurs pushing toward their goals.
The challenge was clear: how do you turn Craig Robinson’s comedy and charm into a living, breathing product experience? The solution was to build a custom alarm clock that could deliver original content 365 days a year, powered by AI and designed to feel like Craig was right there in your bedroom, talking directly to you.
THE CREATIVE
Craig’s personality became the blueprint. Every feature of the clock was designed to bring his humor and energy to life in a way that felt fresh each morning. We built a system around three core content pillars:
The creative was rooted in comedy but engineered for consistency. Each line, riff, and song had to sound like Craig, look like Craig, and keep small business owners motivated without ever slipping off-brand.
THE PRODUCTION PROCESS
To bring Craig to life, we had to invent a full pipeline that merged hardware, live action, AI, and UX. Every piece of the project ran in parallel so the final clock felt seamless from the moment you unboxed it.
THE PIPELINE IN ACTION
The Craig Clock wasn’t just a gadget, it was a living system built to generate fresh content every single day. We built the pipeline to move from script to screen in real time:
From fabrication to software to personality design, every stream fed into one goal: creating a daily wake-up experience that felt like Craig himself was rooting for you.
RESULTS
The Craig Clock delivered on the promise of turning a brand campaign into a living, breathing product experience.
- 50 fully functional units were fabricated and shipped for AT&T’s promotional campaign.
- 365 days of content were built into the system, mixing dynamic AI generations with evergreen affirmations and holiday moments.
- Original music and singing AI gave Craig a new way to perform, creating hype tracks that small business owners could literally wake up to.
- Press and influencer buzz amplified the launch, with unboxings and on-air moments showcasing Craig’s one-of-a-kind personality.
- Post-campaign longevity was built in, with sunset mode ensuring clocks remained useful even after the promotional window closed.
The result was more than an ad. It was a branded device with a voice, a schedule, and a sense of humor, designed to make AT&T unforgettable every morning.
CONCLUSION
Wake Up with Craig turned a campaign idea into a fully functioning product, blending comedy, hardware, and AI into something people could actually live with. It showed how AT&T could connect with small business owners in an unexpected way, not by telling them what the brand stands for, but by making them laugh, sing, and hustle harder every morning.
Craig wasn’t just an alarm clock. He was proof that technology and personality can collide to create experiences that last well beyond a media buy, with AT&T at the center of it all.
